Outlaw

by Amanda Lance

  Getting lost between the pillars and crates, I called out to her to walk along the sides and silently hoped she’d follow my lead when I went side-stepping on the plank. She begged for me to wait for her, but I knew I couldn’t. If I stopped to wait for her, stopped to think for a second, I might change my mind, and that woulda only been for bad.

  I moved even faster, pacing when I got to the platform and jumping up and down to get her attention. And while she looked a little annoyed at me for getting there before her, it wasn’t nearly as mad as I needed her to be.

  Addie sighed and shook the hair from her face. “What are you trying to prove, Charlie?”

  I tried to keep my face blank and turned to the end of the platform. I wasn’t sure if Addie knew about the booth or not, but given anybody’s ability to be quiet, I thought the odds were in my favor for this one.

  We’d found the booth in Utah. We took it as a souvenir after getting’ rid of a priest in exchange for security information on this department store we wanted to do. But we probably woulda done it for free when we learned what he was doing to the kids. Again, I tried to keep those thoughts with me while I showed her the dividers for each of the sections. I jiggled the chains and padlocks so they made as much noise as possible and laughed. I slammed my fist against the side of its wall just so she knew how solid it was.

  “Charlie?” Her voice was shakin’ so bad I could barely hear her. “Wh—what is th—this for?”

  She reached up and rubbed her hand along one of the entry doors. Maybe it was too dark for her to see she was running her hand over blood stains, or maybe her eyes just hadn’t adjusted yet.

  “These were gonna be yer accommodations, darlin’!” I was laying it on thick, but my instincts told me that was the only way to get it done. So I sauntered around the booth like I’d seen Reid do when he was loaded. “It ain’t been used in a real long time, but the last time was when me and Ben caught a steward tryin’ to steal inventory for hisself ’efore we got to port! You know what we did to him in there, Addie? I’ll give ya a hint: it involves pliers and fingers.”

  She turned green for a change but I still didn’t stop. It was obvious that everything I was telling her was making her sick so I was on the right track. And though it stirred my own guts up to do it to her, I knew it was the best solution. Addie looked up at the fabric in the booth and how it was all stained up with spit and piss. She crossed her arms over herself and started shook a little.

  “Stop it, Charlie.”

  “No, Addie.” I had to have it sink in. I had to have her hate me. “This is how it is.” I ripped her arm from her and pointed to the booth. “This is what we do with stowaways.”

  Her eyes got watery and when I let go of her she wrapped her arms around herself again, just tighter this time and without hesitating. “I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, Charlie. It can’t be undone so there’s no point in dwelling on it.”

  My breathing got shallow and the blood wasn’t coming from my heart like I thought it probably shoulda been. ’Cause of that by itself, my arms and legs got all tingly like I’d just got electrocuted. Like all my insides were trying to get out…Ben said that once in a back alley in Egypt, he’d actually seen people lining up around the block to give rich Americans their kidneys…but I guess sometimes their bodies spat it back out. That what it felt like was happening to me now, all these lies I was telling her was making me rot from the inside out.

  “It ain’t just the past.” Digging out the Wi-Fi card from my pocket I stepped up real close to her, stomping so that she had to flinch. “I lied ’bout not havin’ reception. This ship ain’t that old,” I spat each word against her ear. “Only the real older ones can’t get the satellite signals…”

  Addie pulled away from me and shut her eyes. I let her then though, ’cause she so looked like she was gonna be sick. She cried then, too. Big tears that begged me to wipe them up even though I knew I couldn’t. So I took out my frustration on the Wi-Fi card, throwing it at the ground and stomping on it with the heel of my boot until it was nothin’ but bits and pieces.

  When there was nothing left to stomp at, I went to work on myself. I ripped at my hair and paced back and forth, screamed, and scratched at my arms, knowing that if nothin’ else, I deserved it.

  “Ya know what I was thinkin’ ’bout when I tossed you in the back of that SUV?”

  She didn’t say anything and I went in for the kill.

  “I was wonderin’ how much money a pretty little thing like you mighta made over here.”

  Addie backed about as far away as she could get before her crying had her coughing. But again I just squeezed my fists at my sides so that I wouldn’t run out to her.

  “Alotta money in girls anymore.” Stumbling to the end of the plank, I followed each of her steps out. My face mighta said I didn’t care, but my brain was screaming at me.

  “Been thinkin’ ’bout it for ’while. Lot more profit and fewer trips every year. Could retire in less than a year or two if we did it right…course we couldn’t take girls like you, we’d have to get runaways or junkies. But there’s a lot of ’em out there who don’t have nobody lookin’ for them. The only reason you ain’t disappeared is ’cause you get us so much Gawddamn attention!”

  Those looks of hate and horror that went over her were too much for me to handle so I was glad she ran away. She was crying so hard though that she couldn’t see straight and fell a few yards past the aisle. Even when she got back up, her cries echoed against all the containers and I silently asked her to move away from me faster. Everything from my sore head to my twitching toes called out to me to go after her, and when I didn’t I punched the nearest thing to me—taking The Red out in any way I could.

  ***

  I stayed far enough behind to give her space, and close enough if she happened to need me. After a few minutes of hearing her cry softly just beyond my cabin door though, my chest was hurting so bad I thought it just mighta killed me.

  “Charlie.”

  “What’s doing?”

  He looked at the door and then back to me but I just held up my hand to warn him off.

  “Well—ah—before I tell you, you have to promise not to shoot the messenger.”

  “Does it look like I’m armed to you?” Just to be obnoxious I held out my arms and spun myself in a circle.

  “I’ve seen you do worse with less than your fists.”

  “Whatever it is, just tell me.” I flipped a smoke into my mouth. I’d had the worst day of my life and wasn’t looking to play games. “I ain’t in the mood for BS.”

  “We found out who’s onboard.” He sighed. “One of the engine guys pointed him out to Ben.

  “And?” I blew smoke into the air. “Am I supposed to guess now?”

  Yuri nabbed up my smoke and took it for his own. I guess he was also getting’ impatient. “We’re pretty sure it’s Wallace.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  He sighed. “A bad one. A guy I know left me a voicemail yesterday saying he saw someone snooping around our stuff the day we left. Description he gave kinda sounds like Wallace.”

  I looked back at Addie’s door. I knew I was being paranoid, but I didn’t care.

  We got up to the bridge just as the rain started, me only agreeing to go in the first place ’cause Polo was gonna walk the cabin halls along with Mac and a decent guy named Troy. Still though, I told myself I wasn’t gonna be long and the only reason I was leaving was ’cause I was one of the only ones who could help.

  Ben was leaning over the gear control when I walked in and when he saw Yuri and me he tossed his phone to Reid.

  “Hi, kids. What—”

  I rushed him before he could try to be clever and talk his way out. “He really here?”

  “It’s starting to look that way.” Ben sighed. “We don’t really know for certain yet.”

  “A techie says that a VFC went missing after breakfast.” Reid kicked his feet up on the duct-taped tabl
e and leaned back to put his head in his hands.

  “That ain’t good,” I muttered.

  “Gee, Jackass, you think? Maybe if you weren’t so busy with your new girlfriend—”

  “I swear to God, Reid…”

  “When I started asking around, a gentleman named Kong described Wallace with an insurmountable amount of detail as someone he saw on the dock just before we left. Now it could just be a coincidence, however that doesn’t seem very likely.”

  “What do we do?” Yuri asked. “What does he want?”

  “Well, since he hasn’t killed us in our sleep—”

  “Yet.” I kicked the side of an old computer monitor.

  “Then,” Ben tried again, “he probably just wants money.”

  Reid snickered, “Who doesn’t?”

  “Yes, well…” He turned to stare at the rain. “I might have gotten him a little angry in addition to that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because of the mess Wallace sort of made here with that diver and Ms. Battes, I informed him at the safe house that he would not be receiving his share.”

  Yuri said something but it got lost in Red. Still, they musta known what I was gonna do, ’cause they moved just as fast as I would have and held me back before I could take a swing at him. I was furious for reasons I didn’t even understand. Ben was my best friend, but he had put all of us at risk without even tellin’ us about it. And maybe worse yet, he had but Addie at risk—somebody who didn’t even deserve it.

  “Who in the hell do you think you are?” I screamed. “You don’t get to put us all in danger just to save a few bucks!”

  “Gotta agree with him on this one, Boss,” Yuri huffed, struggling to contain me even with Reid’s help.

  “I thought I explained that,” he said defensively. “I said in the car on the way to the ship that he wasn’t going to work with us again—”

  “That isn’t exactly the same as him having a target on us.” They shoved me at the same time and it was enough to push me back. I stumbled on a loose floorboard and tried to steady myself.

  “Easy, Charlie, it won’t solve anything,” Yuri warned.

  Ben eyed me suspiciously. “You’ve risked your life for money dozens of times. What’s really your problem here?”

  Adjusting my shirt back to normal, I sighed and looked at the floor. It was true enough that I had done stupid things for money and probably would again. I had even risked my friends’ lives for money and hadn’t thought a whole lot about it, but Addie seemed like she was worth more than that—worth more than all of us put together.

  “I lied to her,” I mumbled. “Told her I didn’t care…”

  “You did the right thing,” Ben said. “She can either be dead or afraid of us.”

  Yuri nodded but Reid laughed and returned to the duct-taped table.

  They were right. Goddamn it, they had been right all along, too. As much as I knew, it didn’t keep me from hatin’ both options. Why couldn’t one of the options be me and her running away together? Sure, we’d have to run from the cops for the rest of our lives, but if I had her, it’d be worth it.

  And maybe after awhile I could get her to love me.

  “Right now we need to get organized,” Ben said. “Fewer men will be available because of the weather, but if we can be discreet about it, we can begin searching—”

  He never got to finish his sentence before Polo came bursting in the bridge, red-top all messed and huffing and puffing like he had run the entire way there.

  “Okay! Okay! Okay!” he started. “Now, don’t get mad at me…

  Chapter 14

  The cabin was torn up from ceiling to floor. The mattress was upturned and my lamp shattered up into a thousand pieces but that was only the little of it. My laptop was in half and it looked like all my drawings had been taken out of their books. The fellas who had run up behind me stayed in the hall while I walked in the room real slow, startled to process what I was seeing. Even my damn blanket and pillow and been slashed up.

  But there was no sign of Addie.

  “Crap,” Yuri muttered.

  Just like when I was lying to her, everything in my body stopped working. It was like a sort of domino effect, my stomach seized up and it made my throat swell. From there my chest started hurtin’ and I couldn’t breathe. Before I knew it, I was pretty sure my heart wasn’t even thumping no more.

  The only thing that still seemed to be working was The Red.

  I turn my eyes on Polo before grabbing him by the collar and slamming him against the hall.

  “Oh man, oh man, oh man!”

  “You were s’posed to be watching her!” I leaned my forearm against his throat and choked off his air supply.

  “Charlie—”

  I knew the guys woulda let beat on him if I needed too, but I couldn’t hurt Polo no matter how much The Red encouraged me to. It woulda been too much like hurting a kid or a dog, so I loosened my grip on him—at least enough so he could he could talk.

  “I’m sorry! I had to go to the bathroom!” He was so near tears himself that I let him go completely. “I was only gone for a second…”

  “My cabin has been broken into as well,” Ben heaved. “The safe…our passports…gone.”

  All I could think was Addie, Addie, Addie…

  ***

  For once Ben and his cell phone were helpful in getting people together. He called guys who were off shifts and offered them unofficial overtime to help out and be quiet about it. In the meanwhile, I rummaged through cabins—whether they were locked or not—searching for any sign she’d been there. My hand was sore from punching the wall in the hold, but that was easy enough to ignore. Addie was my priority and it didn’t seem like nothing else really mattered until I found her.

  “We’ll have a hard time getting a signal until the weather lightens up.” Yuri smacked his radio, and it shouted static at him.

  “Just call me on my phone,” I told him. “Is Polo in my cabin?”

  “Yeah.” He paused to look between some folding tables and continued on. “In case she turns up. You know he feels really bad—”

  “He should.”

  “Ben is staying in the bridge.”

  “One of us should work the deck to keep eyes and ears for Wallace.”

  “Yeah, Reid is on that, you’d be better, though.”

  I shook my head. “I gotta find her first.”

  “Okay.” He sighed. “I’ll check the engine room.”

  ***

  I dug my way through supply rooms and closets, the weight room and the showers. And even when they gave me crap for it, I ran through the machine shop calling out her name. Every effort only had me comin’ up empty handed. And after about an hour of not hearing from anybody and still seeing nothing from her, I started to panic. Wallace was the kinda guy who didn’t need a drink or an excuse to hurt somebody. I never knew a whole lot about him other than that when killing for money got too boring, he got into stealing. He was a restless guy, but real disciplined at the same time. He didn’t think twice about killing someone fast—or killing ’em slow, neither.

  Putting my hands above my head, it was hard to breathe when my lungs told me I had been running a marathon. There were nooks and crannies all over this ship and hundreds of places to hide. If Wallace had her, he mighta had hours to himself…

  I ran to the galley, stopping every guy I saw between here and there. Most of ’em were afraid of me but knew better than to not answer me when I asked them a question or two. The galley had gotten a lot messier since that morning, but it wasn’t nothing that unusual. Still, I searched under tables and in the fridges. And remembering how tiny she could make herself, I even went turning over those huge cans and looking in cupboards.

  From there I went to the bridge where the reception was better. Polo picked up on the first ring and started apologizing again, but other than that, he didn’t have what I wanted to hear. It took Yuri a little longer to answer, but when
he did, he didn’t know nothing, neither.

  “It’s supposed to rain on and off for the next two days,” Ben said over my shoulder. “I would have asked you to do it earlier—”

  “I don’t have time to try and map a way through it.”

  “Right now it’s only a tropical storm. No matter where Miss. Battes is, the Diyu suffering through a hurricane won’t help.”

  I dug my thumb over missing buttons on the keyboard, making it click like the knees of an old man. Saying nothing, I went over to one of the radar screens and started taking down coordinates. Technically, I was only a mechanic, but when ya gotta avoid the Coast Guard and other thieves, it’s good to have another guy ’round who’s good with a GPS.

  When you’re trying to outrun anything, the smart way to do it is to think ’bout all the different options you got ahead of you. Getting’ ahead or ’round a storm ain’t no different. At that point you gotta consider all your possible losses. Like if we dock at another port for a little while, do we risk getting’ inspected, losing customers, whatever. The thing is though, no two situations are the same so you gotta be prepared for anything. Every book I’d read ’bout navigating helped though and I had experience to the point where I thought I had it down.

  Maybe if I’d had seen Addie coming, I coulda outrun her. I should’ve known early on though, that even with the best satellite I couldn’t have predicted something like her. We had steered right into each other and now I didn’t have any idea what to do. My losses were piling high, and I wasn’t too sure I could live with any of them.

  I saw a couple of bodies running through the rain, but between the wind and fog nobody’s faces were visible. I squinted and tried to make out Reid’s face while I called him up. By the second time it went to voicemail though I’d had enough and went to search for him.